Did You Catch Harley Quinn’s Connection To Robin In Suicide Squad?

August 8, 2016

Stacey

Despite the haters, Suicide Squad had the last laugh when its opening weekend beat both Guardians of the Galaxy and Deadpool to rake in a whopping $135.2 million and set a new all-time record for August releases. And among seemingly everyone who went to see the DC film about a team of supervillains, several noticed an interesting Easter egg at the beginning of the movie.

Remember when we got quick bios for each of the Squad members (except for Slipknot, who just kinda appeared for like 10 minutes and then got himself killed)? Turns out those cheat sheets were actually pretty important—but if you blinked, you missed them.

According toScreenCrush and IGN, fans spotted a factoid on Harley Quinn’s (Margot Robbie) bio that’s raising some serious eyebrows: Apparently she helped slaughter Robin, a.k.a. Jason Todd. Fans previously understood Todd’s death, which occurred in the Batman comic A Death in the Family, to have been perpetrated by the Joker and the Joker alone.

Of course, there’s just one teeny, tiny problem with this: The timeline doesn’t add up. The four issues that make up A Death in the Family were originally published in 1988 and 1989. Harley Quinn, however, first appeared on Batman: The Animated Series in 1992.

But we’ll just go with it for now. The Joker is Harley’s “puddin’,” and it’s clear she would do just about anything to please him. She started shooting at Batman for simply “ruining date night,” so killing a boy associated with the Dark Knight wouldn’t make her think twice—or so we thought.*

Suicide Squad director David Ayer already debunked the fan theory that the Joker (Jared Leto) was really Jason Todd—a theory that gained popularity after a quick tease in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. Batman (Ben Affleck) walked past a Robin costume, which was Jason Todd’s, covered in graffiti presumably done by the Joker. The suit read, “Ha-Ha. The Joke’s On You, Batman.” Jason’s death has haunted Batman for years.

Naturally, fans are losing their minds at this new discovery. Exactly what role did Harley play in Jason’s death? In A Death in the Family, the Joker beat the crap out of Jason and abandoned him and his birth mother in a warehouse with a time bomb. The bomb went off before Batman could save them, and that was the end of that.

*One fan noticed how pissed Harley was after El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) confessed to killing his wife and children. “Own that shit!” she angrily stated. For someone who’s done a whole lot of bad, the death of a couple of kids shouldn’t have struck such a nerve, right? I felt like Harley’s whole diatribe against El Diablo was off-putting and random—but after learning she was somehow involved with the murder of young Jason, maybe it wasn’t so random after all.

@wallydiana I think that’s why. It was partially to herself, like a trigger.